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005 — JUN 2018

SIMPLIFY MAGAZINE
· A QUARTE R LY, DI GITAL PU BLICATI ON FOR FA MI LI ES ·

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Issue 005 — Technology

1. AN INTRODUCTION: THE TECHNOLOGY ISSUE
by The Founders of Simplify Magazine

2. I CHOOSE YOU
by Rachel Macy Stafford

3. THE ART OF SCREEN TIME

by Anya Kamenetz

4. FAMILIES RECLAIMING CONVERSATION

by Sherry Turkle

5. 15 APPS TO MAKE PARENTING EASIER

by Joseph Moran

6. CONSUME LESS, CREATE MORE

by Brian Gardner

7. MULTITASKING IS MAKING YOU WORSE AT YOUR JOB

by Michael Pacchione

8. DEAR PHONE: MAYBE WE SHOULD START OVER

by Catherine Price

9. DECLUTTERING DIGITAL DEVICES

by Joshua Becker

10. OVERTAKEN
by Tarzana Joe

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An Introduction:
The Technology Issue
by THE FOUNDERS OF SIMP LI F Y MAG AZINE

Walk into any public campground, and you’re likely to see a sign stating
rules like these:

1. Campfires allowed only in designated areas.

2. Campfires must be attended at all times.

3. Extinguish fire completely before leaving area.

Obviously, fire has been around for a long time. And yet warnings
concerning it remain posted in countless places—not just campfire sites
but also pumps at gas stations, restriction lists for post office mailers, and
the sides of matchbooks and lighters—because fire can be dangerous when
misused.

What might it have been like for humankind when fire was discovered?
Here was an amazing natural phenomenon with the potential to change
society in powerful ways. It could provide warmth, cook food, purify water,

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create energy, even forge steel. Used incorrectly, however, it could also
destroy homes, forests, lives, even entire cities.

Probably it took a period of time for society to figure how to use fire for
good without allowing it to destroy people or possessions along the way.
Hence, people started sharing advice about how to use fire safely.

With that in mind, we introduce the theme of Simplify Magazine Issue 005:
technology.

Technology, in many ways, is similar to fire. It offers potential to improve

society in countless ways, including ways we can’t even imagine. Yet it also
has the potential to wreak destruction on our lives and relationships.

So, how do we find balance? Similar to humanity’s first interaction with

fire, we’re all trying to answer that question. How do we use technology for
good without allowing it to destroy us along the way? That was the
question we asked when diving deep into this topic.

In this issue, you will read thought-provoking contributions from a

professor at MIT, NPR’s lead education blogger, tech writers, New York
Times bestselling authors, and artists who make their living online. You will
find practical application accompanying research findings and personal
stories.

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Just like with the signs at campgrounds, sometimes it is helpful for us to

establish healthy boundaries regarding the technology we all use. Both for
ourselves and for those we love the most.

With you on this journey,

Joshua Becker & Brian Gardner

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I Choose You
by RACHE L M ACY STAFF ORD

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“Instead of me riding the bus today, could we go to breakfast and then you
could drop me off at school?” my then 13-year-old daughter Natalie
unexpectedly asked one Friday morning.

My Type-A, plan-happy brain initially resisted this spontaneous request.

But while my brain began to list the reasons I couldn’t go, my eyes saw
something else. Standing in front of me was a not-so-little girl in stylish
tribal-print pants that were just a little long for her small physique. They
wouldn’t be too long forever, I knew. She was growing up fast.

“Okay,” I said, suddenly grateful to have an hour alone with this

extraordinary girl.

After breakfast, we ran into a nearby store for a piece of poster board. As
we stood in the checkout line, a woman pulled her cart up behind us.
Standing in the back was a little girl who appeared to be three or four
years old.

“Mama, can I get out?” the little girl asked.

No response.

“Mama, please can I get out?” the child politely asked again as the woman
used her pointer finger to scroll down the screen of her phone, smiling to
herself.

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As the little girl continued to ask the same question, her left leg inched
higher and higher over the grocery cart until it appeared she was going to
get out herself. My daughter, sensing the little girl was about to fall,
quickly stepped next to the cart, preparing to catch her. The little girl
looked at my daughter and put her leg back in the cart. She returned to
asking the same question once again, in hopes her mother might respond
to her pleas.

We hadn’t even made it to the car when I saw tears forming in my

daughter’s eyes. As she shut the door, she quietly said, “That made me really
sad.”

“I saw the way you anticipated what was about to happen. You prevented
the little girl from falling,” I commended.

But that was not what my child wanted to talk about. “The mother didn’t
hear her child, and she was standing right there,” my daughter said sadly. “I
hope it’s not always like that. The little girl may grow up thinking her
words are not important and stop trying to tell her mom things.”

Those words, coming out of that mouth, felt surreal to me. Several years
earlier, my daughter was a little girl yearning to be seen and heard. She
experienced the 21st-century phenomenon of being invisible to someone
while standing right in front of her. That someone was me.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly to that little girl who was now a young lady.

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Seeing Natalie

My daughter knows my story. She’s heard me speak my darkest truths

about distraction’s grip—a grip that took away my smile, made a yeller out
of me, and nearly cost my life at a traffic light. She’s read my books and
gifted them to her teachers having babies. My daughter knows how sorry I
am for what I missed, but she also knows how thankful I was when I woke
up.

My child knows her face was one of the first sights I saw as I came out of a
frenzied, joyless two-year period of my life.

I’d just committed to turning off my phone and sticking it in a drawer at

critical connection times such as meals, bedtime, greetings, and departures.
I’d been saying yes to her “watch me” invitations and offers to “help” in the
kitchen. I was trying to be patient and softer toward her instead of hurried
and critical. I was trying to look up often and spot glimmers of goodness in
my day that were so easily buried by life’s duties and distractions.

On that particular day, my daughter stood on the kitchen stool I’d pulled
up beside me. I’d given her a table knife, and she’d carefully cut up carrots,
cucumbers, and red peppers. Her capable, little hands evenly distributed
the colorful pieces into four salad bowls.

“I like doing this with you,” six-year-old Natalie said, looking up at me

with her gigantic brown eyes. “Thank you, Mama.”

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That’s when I saw her—really saw her for the first time in two years. I saw
that her beautiful round face had elongated. I saw my mother in her big,
brown eyes. She’d gotten a few new freckles on her nose. But the way she
smiled at me, as if there was no place in the world she’d rather be, was what
brought me to my knees. Oh my, I thought to myself. I see her. I really see her
now. Thank you, God, for this beautiful child who is mine.

The sight of this child’s face fueled me to keep looking up and letting go.

Empowering

After going hands free, I quickly noticed many positive results regarding
my personal relationships and inner well-being. By placing protective
boundaries around special connection times each day, I was able to see,
hear, and respond more lovingly to my family members. I went through my
day feeling less conflicted, overwhelmed, and agitated. No longer dictated
by the dinging demands of the device, my thoughts and actions were my
own.

It seemed only natural to voice these important discoveries to the people I

loved, and it felt right to do it in dialogue that empowered rather than
dictated.

Instead of saying, “Devices are not allowed at the dinner table,” I said,
“We’ll miss the best part of eating together if we’re looking at our devices.
Let’s charge them in the other room.”

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Instead of zipping my phone in my purse while driving and not telling

anyone, I said, “I’m going to drive with my phone out of reach. I don’t want
to hurt us or anyone else by driving distracted. Plus, I don’t want to miss
the beautiful sights.”

Instead of saying, “Put away your device while we wait for the doctor,” I
said, “Waiting time is a great opportunity to catch up with each other. Tell
me the best part of your day.”

Rather than demanding with no explanation that all devices be used in a

public area of our house, I talked frequently about Internet safety and why
it was important to keep each other accountable and not hide scary,
hurtful, or confusing cyber issues from each other.

Rather than letting the smile on the cashier’s face go unnoticed, I said to
my child, “Did you see how happy it made the cashier when we
acknowledged her rather than looking at a phone?”

Tool and Barrier

Talking to my daughter about the importance of having a time and place

for technology became a way of life—just like talking about drugs and
alcohol, puberty, body safety, bullying, and other critical topics. I didn’t
know how this ongoing dialogue over the past seven years would impact
Natalie, but I was hopeful. And through a quick stop to get poster board,
the most important discovery was made.

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I see that she sees. Her eyes see an important distinction between
technology as a tool and technology as a barrier.

She is a teenage girl who uses her electronic device to communicate with
friends and family near and far. She uses it to manage the cat rescue
website where we volunteer. She uses it to plan a summer camp for young
children in our neighborhood. She uses it to create and post YouTube
videos for her musical sister. She uses it to shop for the perfect gifts for
people she loves.

But she also steps away from her device, more often than not, to look up
and let go.

She is a teen who loves to apply face masks, wade in the river, and go
antiquing. She’d be happy to take your blood pressure, make you a glass of
iced tea, or babysit your kids. She can look for seashells for hours on end or
just sit and watch the rhythm of the waves. She loves baking, swimming,
and playing with her beloved cats, Banjo and Paisley. Each night at
bedtime, she writes poetry in her diary.

I don’t know if my daughter will retain these healthy boundaries with

technology as she grows, but I do know she’s acquired a vital awareness
that cannot be taken away. Should she veer off the path of choosing real-
life experiences and face-to-face conversations over those on a screen, she’ll
know where the emptiness is coming from. She’ll know why she’s feeling
the need to compare herself to others. She’ll combat the fear of missing out

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by putting down the device and going toward matters most. And she’ll
know, without a doubt, that I’m willing to go there with her.

Choosing

When I found our beloved cat Banjo lying by the open back door after
another cat attacked him, I lay my head on his body and cried. It struck me
that there was only one person I wanted by my side in that moment. I
longed for my daughter Natalie to be with me. She would know. She would
understand.

After taking Banjo to the vet, I prepared myself for my daughter’s arrival. I
knew exactly what she would need to hear and what her face would look
like. I knew she would need me to reassure her. I knew this because I’d been
seeing her face clearly for the past seven years.

Her reaction was exactly as I expected—except for one thing.

After I finished telling her what had happened, Natalie wiped away her
tears and suddenly grabbed my hand. “That must have been scary for you,
Mom. I bet you were crying so hard. I am so sorry you had to go through
that alone.”

My child knew me, too. She knew exactly what I needed to hear and what
my face looked like during that horrible moment. She knew I needed her
to hold me.

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Seven years ago, I chose her. And today she is choosing me.

She is also choosing to stand beside others in pain, see Mother Nature’s
beauty, anticipate falls, celebrate triumphs, cry for those who are ignored,
comfort those who are abandoned, make eye contact, and embrace the
good and the bad that come with an eyes-up, open-handed life.

Seven years ago, I decided I didn’t want to miss my life. As a result, this
young lady is not missing hers.

How to Break Down the Technology Barrier

If a barrier is coming between you and the ones you love, start taking small
steps to break it down:

• Accept their invitations—or invite them to do something they love to

do.

• Pull up a stool and don’t worry about the mess.

• Look up when they walk in the room. Look in their eyes when you say
goodbye. Look beyond their flaws to see all that they are.

• Ask for their opinion and then listen—just listen.

• Say you’re sorry. Tell them that you’re going to do things differently
starting today.

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• Forgive yourself for what you missed in the past. Believe today matters
more than yesterday.

I believe it. My daughter believes it. And so does that person standing in
front of you.

Perhaps today is the day you’ll see that beautiful face for the first time in a
long time, and you will be thankful, so very thankful, you can see it now.

...

Rachel Macy Stafford has one goal: to help people choose love as much as
humanly possible. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Hands
Free Mama, Hands Free Lifestyle, and Only One Today. She is also a certified
special education teacher and inspiring speaker. Millions find solace and
direction in her weekly blog posts at Hands Free Mama and supportive
Facebook and Instagram community, The Hands Free Revolution.

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The Art of Screen Time

by ANYA KAMNET Z

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While researching my new book on families and screens, I came across a

video of a psychological experiment. You can find it on YouTube. [1] I
challenge you to watch it without getting a lump in your throat.

An infant is strapped into a seat. His mother leans toward him, smiling,
widening her eyes, playing peekaboo and this-little-piggy. He squeals,
responding to her coos in the kind of baby “conversation” that is crucial to
the development of speech and healthy attachment.

Then the mother turns away for a moment. When she turns back, her face
is set in a blank expression.

The baby makes a series of bids for his mother’s attention. Smiling,
giggling, squealing, arching his back, clapping his hands, reaching for her,
pointing—pulling out his whole baby bag of tricks. No dice—her face is
like stone. He looks confused, then starts biting his fist uncertainly, twists
around to peek at the researcher. Stress hormones are skyrocketing in his
little body, and his pulse is racing.

Finally he slumps in his seat and starts to wail, red-faced, and his mother
breaks her expression and comforts him. It’s only been a few minutes, with
no discomfort, no scolding.

A four-month-old baby seems to remember this brief experience up to two

weeks later. If you recreate the situation, they will freak out more quickly.

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Edward Tronick, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, has been

conducting these “still face” experiments since the 1970s. He uses them to
model the effects of neglect and maternal depression, especially
postpartum depression, which affects about one in ten women. He’s found
that repeatedly denying children opportunities to connect can cause severe
distress. [2]

These days, “still face” research is being used to ask what damage parents
may be doing with phones constantly in their hands. When I saw the video,
I flashed immediately on my own moments of gazing impassively into the
black mirror of my smartphone while in my young daughters’ presence.

As a digital education correspondent for NPR, I am around screens a lot. I

am also a mother of two. I wrote The Art of Screen Time to help me, and
my readers, move past the anxiety about children and screens with useful,
actionable knowledge.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that there is little hope of healing our
children’s relationships with media unless we address our own use of
screens around our kids. And that means facing up to the impact of
distraction, both physical and emotional.

Physical Risks of Screen Time

Most important, yet often overlooked, are the physical risks.

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By far, the riskiest time that parents may be using smartphones is behind
the wheel of a car. In the United States, car crashes are the leading cause of
death for school-aged children, [3] and cell phones are currently estimated
to be involved in one in four fatal crashes. [4] Traffic deaths have been
trending upward since 2014, after declining for decades, and some identify
handheld devices as the culprit. [5] Meanwhile, in a 2014 survey, 90 percent
of parents said they were distracted by smartphones, CD players, or the
onboard navigation system while driving with children in the car. [6] And
those are just the ones who admitted it.

But that’s not all. Between 2007, when the iPhone was introduced, and
2010, nationwide in the United States, nonfatal injuries to children under
age five rose 12%, after falling for much of the prior decade, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention magazine’s reading of
emergency-room records.

In a paper published in 2014, Craig Palsson, an economist at Yale, took a

look at hospital injury reports collected by the Consumer Product Safety
Commission. [7] These reports described where children were, what they
were doing at the time of the accident, and who they were with.

When the iPhone was first introduced, it could only be used on AT&T’s 3G
network, which meant that it expanded unevenly into otherwise similar
communities. This created a perfect natural experiment to investigate
whether there is a causal relationship between the rise in injuries and the
spread of smartphones. And that’s what Palsson did.

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The results are dismaying. In counties that were included in the iPhone
coverage area, the rise in serious injuries was larger the younger the
children were. It topped out at a 10% increase for infants under age one,
compared with areas that did not have iPhone access. Interestingly, and
damningly, injuries increased only in cases where children were under
parental supervision—coaches, teachers, and daycare workers, presumably,
abstain or are restricted from thumbing away on their phones while
watching children for pay.

Palsson suggests that smartphones “increase the opportunity cost of

supervising children” by tempting parents to access either work or
entertainment instead. Spoken like a true economist. Personally, a cost/
benefit analysis is the opposite of what I’m doing when I pull out my
phone at the playground. Instead, I’m too often responding to that “Ping!”
with all the mindfulness of Pavlov’s dog.

Emotional Risks of Screen Time

The physical risks are straightforward. The emotional and developmental

risks of digital distraction are more nebulous and harder to categorize.

One of the few experimental studies on this topic was carried out by
eminent child development experts Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta
Golinkoff, with Jessa Reed, and published in 2017. In the study, mothers
were asked to teach their two-year-old toddlers a new word. In half of
cases, the mothers were interrupted by a cell phone call. The interrupted

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children failed to learn the new word, even though the mothers repeated it
just as often as they did in the non-interrupted condition. [8]

We are leading highly interrupted lives. Research suggests that adults check
their phones dozens of times per day. [9] While each interruption may be
fleeting, our children’s critical early development is fleeting too.

I want to be clear: child development experts do not endorse the idea of

hovering over your children 24/7. On the contrary. Children, even infants,
need time to explore and play on their own. While they take those
moments to themselves, it’s fine for us to have a moment to ourselves, to
chat with a friend, to look at the news, to get something done, whether in
the real world or on our phones. The key is balance, choosing when you are
going to look at your phone and when you are going to be tuned in to your
child, instead of letting Silicon Valley developers make that choice for you.

Lessons in the Art of Screen Time

I am not here to tell adults what to do about their own technology use in
their own homes and lives. Everybody has a different set of conditions to
deal with. And, just as with our kids, the leeway of healthy patterns of use
is probably wide. There’s a lot more reason to be vigilant if you’re a
working parent like me who sees your kids for four or five hours on a
weekday, for example, versus a full-time caregiver who is eyeball to eyeball
with them 14 hours a day.

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But I have some suggestions if you worry about this the way I do.

• For God’s sake, put your phone away when you’re driving. And at the
swimming pool as well.

• Don’t charge your phone in your bedroom at night.

• Turn off screens for an hour before bed.

• Don’t check it first thing in the morning.

• Turn off notifications on your phone for all but the most essential apps.
This has made a huge difference for me.

• If you have an iPhone, the Do Not Disturb mode allows you to be

contacted only by a few key emergency contacts, say, at the movies.

• De-install Facebook or whatever applications you find most addictive.

...

Anya Kamenetz is the lead digital education correspondent for NPR and
the author of The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital
Media and Real Life, published by PublicAffairs. She lives in Brooklyn with
her family.

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Families Reclaiming
Conversation
by SHERRY TURKLE

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Jon, 37, wants a closer relationship with his 7-year-old daughter, Simone. A
recently divorced management consultant in Los Angeles, Jon eagerly looks
forward to time with Simone, but he also finds it stressful. His time with
his daughter is sporadic and out of their previous domestic routines. He
finds it difficult to “just hang out” with her. So when Jon hears that
Simone’s second-grade class is going on a field trip, he welcomes the chance
to be on the bus. He looks forward to a “natural” way for them to spend
time together.

When I meet Jon, the field trip is fresh in his mind. He describes the time
on the bus: “Naturally, I brought my phone. So number one, I took 800
pictures, and I was sending out every picture while I’m on the field trip.
And then I’m writing and texting, and people are responding to pictures.”

“And all of a sudden I’m realizing as I’m sitting there that Simone has been
sitting there for, like, an hour without me saying a word to her. But then
[on the bus] Simone said, ‘Put your phone down.’”

Jon wants to be with Simone, but talking with her makes him anxious. He
loses confidence when he isn’t holding his phone. Instead of settling down
and figuring out what to say to his daughter, it is easier for Jon to show
love by taking pictures and posting them to the network

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Learning to Be Alone Together

Of course, Jon is not alone. Parents text and do email at breakfast and at
dinner while their children complain about not having their parents’ full
attention. But then these same children deny each other their full
attention. All in all, we’re getting used to a new way of being alone
together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere—connected
to all the different places they want to be. We end up hiding from each
other even as we’re all connected to each other.

In 2010, a young pediatrician, Jenny Radesky, began to notice that more

and more parents and caregivers were using smartphones when they were
with young children. Radesky knew that attention to children during these
kinds of moments was crucial: “the bread and butter of relationship
building.” As Radesky stated to me in an email:

“These are the times when we get to listen to our kids, respond to them verbally
and nonverbally, help them problem-solve around new challenges or intense
reactions, and help them understand themselves and their experiences… This is
how children learn to regulate strong emotions, how to read other people’s social
cues, and how to have a conversation—all skills that are much harder to learn
later on, say at 10 or 15 years of age.”

Radesky did a study of 55 adults who were watching over children as they
ate meals together in fast-food restaurants. [1] The results: Across the
board, the adults paid more attention to their phones than to the children.

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Some adults interacted with children intermittently; most withdrew

completely into their devices. For their part, children became passive and
detached or began to seek adult attention in futile bursts of bad behavior.

We see children learning that, no matter what they do, they will not win
adults away from technology. And we see children deprived not only of
words but also of adults who will look them in the eye. Children’s inner
wisdom is at work as they strain to make eye contact in the fast-food
restaurants. From infancy, the foundations for emotional stability and
social fluency are developed when children make eye contact and interact
with active, engaged faces. Infants deprived of eye contact and facing a
parent’s “still face” become agitated, then withdrawn, then depressed.

We cannot know if the parents we see ignoring children would be more

attentive if they didn’t have phones. What we do know is that our phones
are seductive. When our phones are around, we are vulnerable to ignoring
the people we love.

The Costs and the Hope for Resiliency

Distraction from our phones is costing us in empathic capacity. It is also

costing us in the capacity to be alone. The two are related. We use
conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with
ourselves. So a flight from conversation matters because it can compromise
our capacity for self-reflection. For kids growing up, that skill is the
bedrock of development. Over and over, I hear, “I would rather text than

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talk.” And what I’m seeing is that people get so used to being shortchanged
out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they’ve
become almost willing to dispense with people altogether.

We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel
less alone. But we’re at risk because actually the opposite is true: if we’re
not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely. If we don’t teach our
children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. I’m not
suggesting we turn away from our devices. Just that we develop a more self-
aware relationship with them, with each other, and with ourselves.

The task can seem daunting. But I see reasons for hope. In my studies of the
connected life, I see evidence of a striking resiliency. I am not surprised
that a study of children who put their devices away for five days at camp
shows that they began to recover their empathic capacity. [2]

In my studies of a device-free camp, campers told me that they were more

interested in their summer friends than in their friends at school. They
thought the difference was that at home they talk with their friends about
what’s on their phones; at camp, they talk to each other about what’s on
their minds. Campers remarked on their deepening relationships with
counselors. The camp counselors were offering campers something close to
exotic: undivided attention. While on duty, the counselors, too, had taken
a break from their phones.

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Several of the returning campers remark that each year they notice that
they like themselves better at the end of the summer. They say that what
they notice most is that they have become better friends and teammates.
Also, they are nicer to their parents. And they speak frankly about how
hard it is to keep up their “camp selves” when they get home. There, family
and friends are preoccupied with technology—and it is hard to resist
following along.

At camp I learn many lessons. Among them: We don’t have to give up our
phones, but we have to use them more deliberately. And sometimes, just as
deliberately, we need to take a break.

Doing It Differently

Here are a few ways your family can foster conversation:

1. Create sacred spaces for conversation.

Families can learn how to carve out time for talking—no devices at dinner,
in the kitchen, or in the car. Introduce this idea to children when they are
young so that it doesn’t spring up as punitive but is set up as a baseline of
family culture. It can be an ordinary thing for a mother of a four-year-old
to say: “In our family we need time without any electronics to be alone,
quietly. And we need time to talk to each other. I don’t text in the car
while I’m driving. So that makes it a perfect time for us to talk or just look
out the window.”

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Remember that we teach the capacity for solitude by being quiet alongside
children who have our attention. Take a neighborhood walk—alone or with
family or friends—without devices. Experiment with an evening or a
weekend off the Net as a regular part of your routine.

2. Choose the right tool for the job.

Sometimes we find a technology so amazing—and a smartphone, for

example, is amazing—that we can’t stop ourselves from imagining it as a
universal tool. One that should, because it is amazing, replace all the tools
we had before. But when you replace a conversation with an email just
because you can, there is a good chance that you have chosen the wrong
tool.

Some of these tools have an intrinsic limitation: People require eye contact
for emotional stability and social fluency. A lack of eye contact is
associated with depression, isolation, and the development of antisocial
traits such as exhibiting callousness. And the more we develop these
psychological problems, the more we shy away from eye contact. Our
slogan can be: If a tool gets in the way of our looking at each other, we
should use it only when necessary.

3. Remember what you know about life.

We learn the capacity for solitude by being “alone with” another. So, when
parents email during a child’s bath time or text during a beach walk, the

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parents may persist in their behavior but they admit they are not happy.
They sense they have crossed some line. One father tells me that he takes
his phone along when he and his 10-year-old son have a game of catch. The
father says, “I can tell it’s not as good as when I played catch with my dad.”
It is a deeply human impulse to step back from these moments that
endanger shared solitude. Shared solitude grounds us. It can bring us back
to ourselves and others.

An Unedited Life

Remember that conversation, like life, has silences and boring bits. It is
often in the moments when we stumble and hesitate and fall silent that we
reveal ourselves to each other. Digital communication can lead us to an
edited life. We should not forget that an unedited life is also worth living.

...

Sherry Turkle is the author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a

Digital Age, from which the text of this article was adapted. (Published by
Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of
Penguin Random House, LLC.) Copyright © 2015 by Sherry Turkle.

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15 Apps to Make Parenting

Easier
by JOSEPH MORAN

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Parents lead busy lives these days, and our mobile devices sometimes get
the blame for turning us (and perhaps even our kids) into harried,
hyperconnected hamsters. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Used
judiciously, mobile devices can be valuable tools to enhance and simplify
your life.

With this in mind, I would like to offer a collection of 15 helpful apps for
parents, covering home and time management, health and safety, and
education and recreation. You’ll find apps to help you manage allowances,
chores, or morning routines, keep tabs on far-flung family members
(including young drivers, natch), and put some limits on what kids can see
and do on their own devices. We also have apps that can help a child with
their schoolwork, learn an instrument, and express themselves creatively
without tons of paper clutter. There’s even an app that will give you an
incentive to leave your phone on the counter for a while and focus on
something else.

Every app listed is available for both Apple and Android devices, and a few
even work with Amazon’s Fire tablets. Most are free or at least start out
that way—we’ll point out the cost of any paid upgrades and what they buy
you.

On to the apps…

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Home and Time Management

Rooster Money (Free)

• Apple

• Android

• Amazon Fire

We all want our kids to learn the value of a dollar (or a pound or a peso, as
the case may be), and an allowance can be a good way to accomplish this.
Manually tracking allowance payments and spending can be a major chore,
but Rooster Money makes things a lot easier.

Specify an allowance amount and frequency, and the credit is posted to

your child’s account. Parent or child can then allocate portions of their
allowance into individual “pots” for different purposes such as general
spending, long-term saving, giving, or short-term purchase goals.

A paid “Plus” upgrade ($2.49 a month or $18.99 per year) adds features
including the ability to require completion of specific chores to unlock
allowances, as well as pay interest on a child’s savings.

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Mealime (Free)

• Apple

• Android

For working parents, figuring out weeknight dinners is often a big hassle
and typically something left for the last minute. But Mealime (not
MealTime—that’s owned by candy company Mars, Inc.) can simplify your
evenings a bit by letting you plan a week of meals in advance with
relatively little effort.

After you specify your preferred type of diet (low-carb, vegan, etc.), any
allergies, and the foods you don’t like, Mealime presents a list of recipes
that meet your criteria and generally require 30 to 40 minutes to prepare.
Pick your five meals, and the app generates a comprehensive shopping list
for the week, complete with substitution options.

A $5.99 monthly “Pro” subscription unlocks additional recipes, provides

nutrition info, and lets you create meal plans more than a week in advance.

ChoreMonster (Free)

• Apple

• Android

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• Amazon Fire

ChoreMonster says that its app will make your kids “beg to do their
chores.” We’re not sure about that, but it should greatly minimize time
spent complaining about them.

Parents create a list of chores with point values assigned, then assign
rewards (special privileges or coveted items) that unlock when a specific
point threshold is reached. When a child marks a chore complete, parents
get notification and “approve” the chore if it was done satisfactorily.

As an added incentive, after each chore is approved, kids get a visit to the
Monster Carnival, where they can spin a wheel to win collectible monsters
or gag consolation prizes such as a banana peel or a jar of farts.

Happy Kids Timer ($1.99)

• Apple

• Android

If early mornings are pandemonium at your house (and if they’re not,

please tell us how you manage that), Happy Kids Timer can bring some
sanity to the situation.

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Use the app to create a checklist of all of a child’s morning routine must-
do’s (e.g., make bed, brush teeth, brush hair, eat breakfast, pack bag) in the
order you want and with a time duration assigned to each. Kids perform
each task mirrored by an on-screen doppelgänger and receive certificates
for getting out the door with everything done.

(Note: There is a free version of this app, but it’s essentially a demo version,
as it doesn’t allow any customization.)

Forest ($1.99)

• Apple

• Android

If compulsive phone-checking is interfering with family life or completion

of household tasks, there’s an app for that. No, seriously.

Open Forest, pick a species of tree, specify an amount of time, and leave
the app running (and the phone unattended). Your virtual tree will
automatically grow and flourish, unless you pick up the phone and switch
to another app, in which case the tree dies. And it’s not just bits and pixels
—you’ll earn virtual currency that you can spend on the planting of actual
trees.

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Health & Safety

CDC Milestone Tracker (Free)

• Apple

• Android

It’s important for all new parents to closely monitor children to make sure
they’re reaching critical milestones for social, movement, language, and
cognitive development. CDC’s Milestone Tracker offers a convenient way
to keep tabs on various developmental milestones from two months
through five years of age.

The app offers an interactive checklist to help gauge your child’s progress
toward each milestone, as well as photos and videos to illustrate what each
milestone looks like. A “When to Act Early” section highlights areas that
warrant prompt intervention, and the app also offers an easy way to jot
down concerns or questions for the next doctor’s visit.

KidsDoc ($1.99)

• Apple

• Android

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When one of your children is sick or injured, do you head straight to the
emergency room, make a doctor’s appointment, or simply keep a watchful
eye?

In this kind of situation, KidsDoc from the American Academy of

Pediatrics can help you find the line between prudence and paranoia.
Search for an illness or injury by body area or keyword, and the app will
recommend different actions based on the nature and severity of the
symptoms. It also includes photos to aid in diagnoses, and it provides
practical tips on how to apply first aid where appropriate.

Brush Up (Free)

• Apple

• Android

When you send small kids to brush their teeth, can you really be sure they
didn’t just do a quick and (literally) dirty job? Brush Up can make this
boring but important task fun and engaging enough that kids will actually
want do a thorough job. Kids watch themselves via the device’s camera and
brush along with Budd, a toothy robot, while receiving guidance on proper
technique and tooth coverage to a techno beat.

A $9.99 one-time (or .99 per month) upgrade eliminates ads and gives
parents the option receiving emailed progress reports.

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Qustodio (Free)

• Apple

• Android

• Amazon Fire

You probably don’t want your child to have unlimited access to an

unrestricted smartphone or tablet, but you can’t always be looking over
their shoulder. With parental-control app Qustodio, you can put some
limits on how—and how long—a device is used.

The free version of Qustodio offers website content filtering, device usage
limits, and activity reporting for a single device. With an annual
subscription, which starts at $54.95 per year for 5 devices (10- and 15-device
plans are also available), you get added features including the ability to
block access to certain apps and games, track and block calls and text
messages, and monitor time spent on certain social media/messaging
services. (For Facebook, Qustodio can also monitor posting activity.)

A caveat: Apple’s iOS operating system is much more restrictive than

Android in what it allows apps to do, so Qustodio offers fewer features on
the former. For a list of features on each platform, consult this page (and
scroll to the bottom).

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Life360 (Free)

• Apple

• Android

How do you keep up to date on the comings and goings of a modern

mobile family? Constant check-in calls and texts is one way, but Life360
offers a better alternative.

The app can display the current location of all your family members at a
glance and lets you chat individually or across the entire group. Groups,
known as “Circles,” can be expanded to include family, friends, or
caregivers, and you can set up ad hoc circles for things like vacations and
special events. A “Places” feature allows you to define specific geographic
locations that generate alerts when members of a Circle arrive and depart.

The free version of Life360 allows only two “places” and saves 48 hours of
location history. A Plus upgrade increases that to 100 places and 30 days,
respectively, and adds crime alerts and in-app support.

AutoBrain ($29.97 for tracking device, plus $9.97 per month for service)

• Apple

• Android

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Having a young driver in your household is often nerve-wracking, but

AutoBrain can provide some peace of mind.

The AutoBrain app works in conjunction with a companion tracking

device that remains in the vehicle. Plug the tracking device into the
diagnostic port under the dash (of any car manufactured since 1996) and
the app will tell you if your car’s being driven recklessly (as measured by
hard acceleration and hard braking), exceeds a specified speed limit, or
travels outside a predefined geographic area. And yes, you’ll also know if
the tracker gets unplugged.

The app also has a “Baby Mode” that will remind you to check for an infant
each time the ignition is switched off.

Education and Recreation

Khan Academy (Free)

• Apple

• Android

When your child needs some remedial help with schoolwork or just wants
to learn something new, Khan Academy is a good place to go. The app
offers countless expansive and well-organized classes (consisting of
narrated videos, practice material, and quizzes) in a wide variety of

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subjects, including math, science, computing, the humanities, and even

SAT test prep. And it’s all free—although donations are accepted.

Yousician (Free)

• Apple

• Android

When a child expresses interest in a musical instrument but formal lessons

aren’t possible for budgetary or logistical reasons, Yousician may be a good
alternative. It supports guitar, piano, bass, and ukulele and features
colorful, interactive lessons that keep kids (or adults, for that matter)
engaged. The app listens via the microphone to provide feedback on
accuracy and timing.

Alas, Yousician’s free version is limited to one lesson per 12-hour period
(lessons vary in length but typically last 20 to 30 minutes). A “Premium”
subscription removes that limitation at a cost of $19.99 per month for a
single instrument or $29.99 per month for all four, while yearly
subscriptions, for $119.99 or $179.99, respectively, cuts the effective price by
half.

Rocketbook (+ Rocketbook Color Notebook) ($22)

• Apple

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• Android

Kids can be prolific artists, and the sheer volume of paper they generate
makes storing all that creativity—not to mention sharing it with family—a
challenge. The Rocketbook app, used in conjunction with the Rocketbook
Color notebook ($22 at Amazon), solves both problems.

Kids draw in the notebook using standard colored pencils or dry-erase

markers. Then you use the app to scan the images and upload them to one
of several supported cloud storage services and/or send to predefined
recipients via email or text message. Notebook pages can be wiped clean
for reuse, and Rocketbook provides free printable pages if you want to try
out the app and concept before purchasing the notebook.

YouTube Kids (Free)

• Apple

• Android

YouTube can be a good source of entertainment or enrichment for a child,

but to help keep them away from the nasty stuff, the YouTube Kids app
gives parents a high degree of control over what kids can watch on the
service.

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Setting up a child’s profile algorithmically filters out age-inappropriate

content, but because no automated filter is perfect, parents can also
restrict viewing to curated collections of channels and disable searching to
limit potential exposure to unwanted material. Google also recently
announced that later this year the YouTube Kids app will allow parents to
further limit viewing only to individually hand-picked channels and
videos.

...

Joseph Moran has been helping people manage personal and small business
technology for more than 20 years. He’s written for numerous publications,
including PC Magazine, Smart Computing, and Small Business Computing, and
is author of File Management Made Simple, Windows Edition from Apress.

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Consume Less, Create More

by BRI AN GAR DNER

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It is widely understood that those of us living in developed countries

consume far and away more material goods than are necessary—or even
reasonable. That’s a part of what drew me toward minimalism in the first
place, a few years ago.

But another significant motivator for me was a realization that I was

consuming more content (news, entertainment, advice, rants, fluff) than I
ever had before and that all of that consumption was decreasing the quality
of my work, my relationships, and my life, rather than increasing it.

I began every day, for example, by reading news that came to me through
notifications on my phone. Because of Twitter, I was well aware of what my
entrepreneurial peers were creating, and thanks to Instagram, I also often
knew what those peers were having for dinner or doing over the weekend.
Facebook brought me more news, more opinions, more success stories,
more noise. Sometimes it felt like the volume of information that flowed
into my mind every day could knock over a truck.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Did you know that TechCrunch has reported that U.S. consumers now
spend an average of five hours a day on their mobile devices? (Yes, five
hours!) [1]

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Did you know that Apple Podcasts features more than half a million active
podcasts? Or that podcast listeners report listening to seven episodes a
week? [2]

How about the fact that 41 percent of American women regularly use
Pinterest? [3]

As much as I wanted to believe that knowledge is power and that

everything inside my head would make me a better entrepreneur, a better
web designer, a better husband, a better dad, I started to wonder if maybe
it was stunting me instead. I needed a clearer perspective on it all.

I remember exactly where I was when I read a single line of text that
changed my life.

Where Passion Meets Need

Because of the buildup of stress and pressure I’d been feeling, I decided to
read the book Packing Light by Allison Fallon. I had picked up a copy
(actual paper!) and had taken a moment to sit with it on our deck, a cup of
coffee nearby. As I read, I was struck by these ten words: “Where your
passion meets their need, that is your calling.”

What was I really passionate about? (Consuming podcast episodes, blog

posts, and viral videos? My answer: no.)

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What did people need?

How could I make those two questions intersect?

As I mulled this over for the next few weeks, I slowly admitted to myself
that my passion wasn’t consuming, and that wasn’t what people needed.
What the world needed—what I needed—was my creativity.

I needed to create meaningful work, not just consume noise in the hope
that it would eventually contribute to my calling. I needed to create now.

Going forward, I determined I’d operate under a new paradigm: I’d spend
less time consuming content and more time creating passion-filled work.

How to Be More Productive

If you, too, find yourself falling into the consumption trap all too often,
here are six tips to help you consume less and create more. In so doing, you
might just bridge the gap between your passion and someone’s need,
leading—if you’re lucky—to discovering your calling.

1. Limit the volume of information you take in every day.

It may be the most obvious step, but it’s essential to creating a body of
work you’re proud of. You need less distraction, less noise to compete with
your creativity.

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Curt Steinhorst, distraction researcher and writer of Can I Have Your

Attention? says few things matter more than your attention.

“[Attention] holds the power to unlock your potential. It can be the source of your
success at work and the key ingredient to great relationships. Yet, distractions are
working around the clock to steal your attention away from you, along with your
time and energy. And they’re doing a pretty good job.”

In that case, I suggest the following to help you avoid these drains on your
attention:

• Turn off as many notifications as possible on your phone.

• Try using the Moment app to track how much you’re using your devices
every day. You can also set up time limits, alerts for when you’re about to
go over, and the like.

• Unsubscribe from emails and podcasts that aren’t serving you creatively.

• Deliberately edit the people, pages, and profiles you follow on social
media.

• If you’re a writer, try a distraction-free writing tool, such as Calmly

Writer.

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2. Notice what time of day you do your best creative work, and leverage it.

Do you do your clearest thinking right when you wake up? Or are you most
creative in the late evening, when your inhibitions are lower? Set up your
workflow so that you capitalize on the time of day when you’re most
creative, leaving other periods of time for answering emails, scheduling
meetings, making phone calls, and other low-creativity tasks.

3. Be honest with yourself about the legitimate work that is taking away
from your creative expression.

Often we gravitate to work that requires less brainpower to complete. And

we justify it by telling ourselves that it is work that does need to get done.

Maybe it does, yes. But does it need to happen during your most
potentially productive hours of the day? Does it need to be done by you, or
could some else do it?

And even harder to answer is this: Does it really need to get done at all?

For many of us in the entrepreneurial space, posting to social media is a

prime example of legitimate work that is all too often taking the place of
deeper creative work. Maybe you do need to build that Facebook page for
the sake of your platform, but do you really need to put as much time into
it as you are? Ask yourself the hard questions, and carve out more space for
the creative work you feel called to do.

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4. Take to the outdoors.

A quick walk outside is a great break for your brain, because seeing nature
—when your eyes are so accustomed to artificial surroundings—is
restorative and increases creativity. But a word of caution: be sure to
commit to yourself beforehand that you’ll return to your work as soon as
you get back in. Otherwise, what could have been a restorative break leads
to wasted time.

Many times I will run first thing in the morning, setting my brain free to
think about the things I will do when I return. I’ve found this is a brilliant
way for me to start the day—weather permitting, of course.

5. If you find yourself gravitating back to consumption over creation,

consider the impact of boredom.

One of the reasons we consume is because we’ve lost interest in whatever

our hands are engaged in. If your creative work is no longer lighting you
up, it may be time to shift directions or even start something new
altogether.

In this way, the temptation of consumption can actually be a well-timed

clue—when you’re watching for it.

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6. Set up a life of creativity.

After more than a decade of doing the creative work I feel called to do, I
can tell you this: You have to be inspired. Regularly.

You can’t spend all of your time behind a computer or in your workshop,
wherever your place of work may be. You need to do the activities that fill
up your soul. You need to travel to places that inspire you, climb
mountains that challenge you, and have conversations with people that
make you think about something in a new light.

Life, Designed

Creativity isn’t just about the work. It’s about designing a life that allows
ideas to flow to you. Design a life of creativity, and I can promise you that
you’ll experience the satisfaction that comes from production instead of
consumption.

...

Brian Gardner is the founder of No Sidebar, a collaborative blog about

minimalism, simple living, and finding happiness. He is a believer in living
with purpose and passes the time by listening to music, writing poetry, and
web design. Follow along on his new venture, Authentik, where he helps
creative entrepreneurs build an honest brand and digital platform.

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Multitasking is Making You

Worse at Your Job
by MICHAE L PACCH IONE

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Once upon a time, I mentored for a start-up incubator in Portland. A few

months into my tenure, the manager asked if I wanted to give a How To
Pitch tutorial. I love presentations in the way my parents love CBS dramas.
Which is to say: heck yeah I wanted to give that tutorial.

I spent weeks preparing. This presentation was going to make a difference.

Ten companies would be funded because of me. I wrote it once, wrote it
twice, wrote it three times. I rehearsed. I asked for feedback. I ordered a
prop off eBay. I was ready.

Then came presentation day. One last rehearsal, this time to my pump-up
mix. Walking into the room, I saw nine different companies and 25 people
in the room. Exactly one of them—a founder named David—looked back
me as I started presenting. Everyone else laptopped their way toward some
other task, occasionally glancing up when David would audibly react to
something.

Weeks later, I asked David why he had paid attention to my presentation.

“I figured you put all this work in,” he said. “You deserved the respect of me
listening to you.”

I knew then and there that David’s company would be funded (and
eventually acquired). But something else stood out about David. He had far
more energy than anyone else in that room. Everyone else seemed like they
needed coffee to make it through the day. Not David. Being an athlete

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helped, but there were other athletes on his team. What made him
different?

I didn’t have an answer then, but I do now: He avoided multitasking.

When it was time to email, he emailed. He didn’t bring his computer to
meetings. His phone was always on silent. He was the most energetic,
productive person in his cohort.

His secret was, basically, he did one thing at a time. Sometimes it doesn’t
take much to be a revolutionary.

Toggle Brain

Most weeks of the year, I lead presentation trainings for big corporations.
When I first started, I politely requested that people lay off their phones
and laptops. That only half worked.

One day, I changed the language on my request: “Basically every study

that’s been done on multitasking has concluded the same thing: we’re not
good at it. Now, we all think we are—you may even be thinking, ‘No, no,
Mike, I can totally listen to you and text at the same time.’ I know you can.
But seriously: virtually every study has concluded we’re not good at it.”

Having heard the science, most people get it. By the time I finish my little
passive-aggressive shtick, their phones and laptops are off. Once in a while,
though, there’s someone who just can’t help it. They finish an activity and

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it’s automatic: Must. Check. Phone. 100% of the time these are the people
who are dead tired by the end of the workshop. 100% of the time.

And is it any wonder? Do you know what happens when you’re half in the
room and half in Phone World? I’m no neuroscientist, but as it’s been
explained to me: When you multitask, you don’t actually do multiple tasks
at once. Actually what happens is your brain switches rapidly between
tasks. [1]

Pretty cool, right? The problem is, every time we toggle between tasks, our
brain has to reset. Doing so is, frankly, tiring. According to technology
writer Nicholas Carr, switching between even two tasks substantially adds
to our cognitive load and impedes our thinking. [2]

Oh, and there’s this other pesky thing: every time you’re distracted by an
email or text, it takes an average of 15 minutes (!) to re-orient to a primary
task. [3]

Think about this: Every email thread in your inbox is a different task. Every
tab you have open. Every wordy slide you read. Every text message you
receive. Every time you switch between those tasks it takes 15 minutes to
reset and get back to peak performance.

As the one leading the workshop, I used to think the problem was me. In
fact, I said as much aloud. “If you’re a good enough presenter, people will

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stay off their phones. If they’re texting someone, it’s because you’re not
compelling. You need to be better.”

It’s a great goal to aspire to. It’s also not accurate. The first person to point
this out to me was an Internet guru named Clay Shirky. He said, “Humans
are incapable of ignoring surprising new information in our visual field, an
effect that is strongest when the visual cue is slightly above and beside the
area we’re focusing on. (Does that sound like the upper-right corner of a
screen near you?)” [4]

Boom. Totally true. Most people will gravitate toward short-term pleasure.
Or more accurately: unless properly guarded, the synapses of most people’s
brains will gravitate toward the dopamine hit of, say, your Infinity War
group text instead of my lesson on color theory.

Follow the Leader Where?

Last week I asked a few workshop attendees what their meetings are like.
Are people on their phones and laptops the whole time? “Yes,” they told
me. “Every single person.”

Follow-up question: Are the managers the ones setting that example? Yes,
they were.

This is the other thing. Managers who frequently send emails during
meetings are 220% more likely to have direct reports who also

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“multitask.” [5] Follow the leader? You’ll be following them into a tired,
stressed-out work experience.

I asked one of the attendees what would happen if she started meetings by
asking people to put away their phones. Make a bargain with them, I
suggested. If you put your phones away, the meeting takes half as long.

“I’ve actually done that,” she said, “It’s really effective. But starting every
single meeting that way? It would feel weird.

Weird, in this case, is another way of saying, “But that’s not what everyone
else is doing.” Which can feel scary. But here’s the thing: everyone else is
tired. Everyone else is stressed out. We don’t have to be.

Browsheimers

Any good “we’re addicted to our devices” article needs to include the
author’s transformation. Here’s my low point:

I’d been suffering from Browsheimers (browser Alzheimer’s, get it?) for
weeks. Staring at open tabs, wondering what site I’d intended to visit just
1/50th of a second earlier when I’d pressed command + T. Mindlessly
swiping through apps. Reading an email, “taking a break,” then opening the
exact same email on my phone.

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My actual low point, though, came in the form of a conversation while

visiting my brother. It was the night of my 2012 fantasy baseball draft. I
tried to cram in as much of my draft as possible before flying back to
Portland. My brother asked when I wanted to leave for the airport. I
responded.

He started laughing. I couldn’t understand why.

“I asked about drive time to the airport,” I said to him. “What’s so funny
about asking about that?”

“That’s not what you said.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not. I asked when you wanted to leave for the airport. Your
response was ‘Adrian Beltre.’ ”

“No, it wa—”

Before I could finish my rebuttal, I looked at the chat box of my fantasy

league draft. I’d written, “Depends—how far is Oakland airport?” Sweet
mercy. My multitasked brain had crossed the “talk” and “type” wires.

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Steal This

At this point you might be thinking, Yeah, yeah, I get the science, I get the
problem, but this is all too idealistic. In today’s corporate world you need to be
able to focus on several tasks at once.

So, what would happen if a corporate employee went off the multitasking
grid?

My friend Zech, a copywriter, can answer that question. Two years ago
Zech did the unthinkable: he gave up his phone for Lent. Not candy. Not
alcohol. Not Facebook. His phone.

I asked him about it recently.

He told me, “Giving up my phone was one of the most freeing things I’ve
ever done. It gave me the chance to be bored [a key ingredient to creativity]
and it made most everyone on the street appear to be missing out on the
magical mundane.”

This year I tried to mimic Zech. I do too much business travel to fully give
up my phone for Lent the way he did. I couldn’t make it around strange
cities without Google Maps. I could, however, settle on a reasonable first
step: no texting until noon.

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Oh my word was this effective. Let me be clear: I have read productivity

hack after productivity hack. Nothing has done more for me than simply
cutting off text messaging for half the day.

If you need a good first step, feel free to steal that one.

Other ideas:

• Set a goal of not checking your phone when your husband/wife/similar

leaves dinner to use the bathroom. Better yet, leave the phone in another
room.

• Attend a work meeting without a phone or laptop. Just bring a pad of

paper.

• Buy and install Freedom on your computer. It keeps you offline when
you need to focus. First time I used it when it asked how long I wanted
to be offline for, I said 75 minutes. That’s how long it ordinarily took me
to do the work I wanted to do. Without access to [Link], Facebook,
and so on, I was finished in 18.

• If you’re the type of person who uses tabs as your to-do list, open a new
window when you’re reading an article. Remove the temptation to click
on one of the other tabs.

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• For work projects: write your ideas out before entering into PowerPoint,
Word, or similar.

• If you’re feeling particularly challenged, commit to having a day per

week when you fast from your phone completely. It’s weird, but you can
actually watch an entire sporting event without texting friends about it.

None of this is very hard, mind you. You just have to commit to doing it.

Put the phone down. Close your email. Close your tabs. Work on one thing
at a time. You will feel free, you will feel calm, you will feel energized.

Or you can live in the world of frenetic multitasking. The choice is yours.

...

Mike Pacchione works for Duarte, the biggest presentation firm in the
country. He travels all over the world giving speeches about how to give
speeches to companies such as Google, Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft, Twitter,
and Capital One. Read more about him at [Link].

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Dear Phone: Maybe We Should

Start Over
by CAT HER INE PRI CE

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I first realized I needed to break up with my phone just over two years ago.
I had recently had a baby and was feeding her in a darkened room as she
cuddled on my lap. It was a beautiful, tender moment—except for one
important detail. She was gazing at me … and I was on eBay, scrolling
through listings for Victorian-era doorknobs.

I’ll skip the details of all the thoughts that swirled through my mind in
that darkened room. Only to say, I knew immediately that something
needed to change in my relationship with my phone.

According to Moment, a time-tracking app, the average person spends four

hours a day interacting with his or her phone. Call it an addiction; call it
something else. Regardless, that’s a quarter of your waking hours. But the
good news is you can take back your life.

After spending two years researching and writing a book about how to
create a healthy relationship with your phone without giving it up
completely, here are eight of my top suggestions for changing your
relationship with your phone:

1. Delete social media apps.

Social media is like junk food: bingeing on it makes us feel bad, and yet
once we start consuming it, it’s really hard to stop.

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Thankfully, there’s an easy way to fight back: delete all social media apps
from your phone. I’m serious. Do it now. Put your finger on an app icon
until it starts jiggling, and then press the x in the corner. The app,
panicking, will respond with a manipulative question (“Are you really sure
you want to delete me and all my data?”). Say yes and then shake your head
in disgust: everyone knows that Facebook didn’t really delete any of your
data. It’s all still lurking in the cloud, ready to be used against you and
reinstalled/downloaded at any time.

2. Say “No” to notifications.

Remember the famous experiment where the Russian physiologist Ivan

Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate whenever they heard a bell? He did this
by ringing a bell every time he fed them, so that (thanks to dopamine) the
dogs began to associate the sound of the bell with the promise of food.
Eventually, Pavlov could get the dogs to drool in anticipation any time they
heard a bell. This is exactly what happens to us when we enable push
notifications—the alerts that show up on our home and lock screens
countless times per day. Notifications use our brains’ natural ability to
associate cues with rewards (and our anxiety over uncertainty) to get us to
compulsively check our phones.

Push notifications are evil and must be destroyed. Do it now. Go into your
phone’s notifications settings and turn off all notifications except for
phone calls and—if you want— messaging apps and your calendar.

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3. Make folders a force for good.

Put your apps (with the possible exception of those on your home screen)
into folders even if it means that much of your screen is empty. The point
of the folders is not just organization (though it certainly does scratch a
certain OCD itch). The point is to protect yourself from yourself: if you
put apps into folders, their icons become so small that when you swipe
over to that page, you can’t immediately tell which apps are where. This
means that instead of opening an app just because you happen to see its
icon (that is, reacting), you have to proactively want to open the app.

4. Change where you charge.

Many of us complain about automatically checking our phones first thing

in the morning and right before bed at night (and in the middle of the
night, for that matter). Well, of course we’re doing this: we’re sleeping
within arm’s reach of our phones. The easiest way to break this habit is to
make it harder to reach for your phone while you’re in bed. And the easiest
way to do that is to create a charging station for your phone and other
Internet-enabled mobile devices that isn’t in your bedroom—or, at very
least, that’s not right next to your bed. (If you haven’t already gotten a hold
of a non-phone alarm clock, please do so now.)

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5. Establish no-phone zones.

As the name suggests, a No-Phone Zone is a place where you do not use
your phone. Full stop. No-Phone Zones are great because they remove the
need for decision-making in the moment. They can also help reduce
conflict: if everyone knows that phones aren’t allowed at the dinner table,
then you don’t need to have a new argument about it each night. Take a
moment to establish several No-Phone Zones for yourself and, if
applicable, your family or roommates. I suggest starting with the dinner
table and bedroom: banning phones from the dinner table brings people
together, and banning phones from bedroom improves sleep. The effective
date of your No-Phone Zones should be tonight.

6. Give your phone a wake-up time.

You can also create No-Phone Zones based on time—for example, no

checking email after 6 p.m. Here’s what I’d like you to do: assign your
phone a wake-up time for tomorrow morning. This should be at least an
hour after you get up yourself.

There are two ways to enforce your phone’s wake-up time. The first is to
put it on Airplane Mode (or turn it off) and charge it in a place where you
won’t see your phone at all until its wake-up time. The second method is to
use an app blocker to enforce your phone’s wake-up time.

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7. Go gray.

Try switching your phone’s display from color to grayscale (black and
white). It will make your phone look like a Xerox copy of itself—which
turns out to be a very unattractive effect.

8. Phast.

Just as intermittent fasting has been shown to be good for our physical
health, regular short phone fasts—what I call phasts—are essential for our
emotional and intellectual health. As you well know, being constantly
tethered to our phones exhausts our brains; they need regular phone-free
time to recover and rejuvenate. And as is also true with other potentially
addictive behaviors, it’s important to take a break once in a while just to
prove that you can. There are many ways to phast—and they don’t have to
be 24 hours long. You could continue the practice of turning your phone
off when you go to bed on Friday and giving it a Saturday “wake-up” time
that’s several hours after your own, for example.

Whatever you do, remember that the point is not to punish yourself; it’s to
make yourself feel good.

As you try out some of these strategies, you may notice that your
relationship with your phone still doesn’t feel perfect. Don’t worry: it’s not
supposed to. Some days feel better than others. As long as we’re cultivating
self-awareness, we’re on the right track.

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The good news is that we can undo many of our phones’ negative effects.
We can rebuild our attention spans. We can get our focus back. We can
reduce our stress, improve our memories, and reclaim a good night’s sleep.
We can change our relationships with our phones and take back our lives
from our devices.

The goal, after all, isn’t to spend less time on your phone; it’s to spend more
time on your life.

...

Catherine Price is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The

New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Mother Jones, and
many other publications. Her most recent book is How to Break Up with
Your Phone, from which this article was adapted. She lives in Philadelphia.

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Decluttering Digital Devices

by JOSHUA BECKER

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You know how quickly technology is advancing, right? Within the past ten
years alone, the following tech platforms were developed and released:
Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, Snapchat, Stripe, and Slack.

Of course, not only are new technologies being developed, but the devices
upon which those technologies exist also continue to expand—endlessly. In
2014 alone, Apple released 2 new smartphone models, Motorola released 11,
and HTC came out with 27. And those numbers pale in comparison with
the ones from Korean manufacturers: LG released 41 smartphones, while its
rival Samsung popped out 56 new smartphones. [1]

In 2017, 1.9 billion phones were sold. Yup, that’s billions with a “b.” This
number is only growing. Most analysts predict that the number of mobile
phones sold in 2018 will top 2 billion units for the first time. [2] And that’s
only phones.

According to the CTA Consumer Tech Industry Forecast, this year alone,
people living in the United States will buy 50 million laptops, 50 million
smart watches, 44 million smart speakers, 22 million televisions, 5 million
virtual reality headsets, and 4 million drones. [3]

That’s a whole lot of electronic devices being purchased.

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Why so many? Because the promise of changing how we interact with the
world is just as standard on new technological devices as a power-on
button. We are told technology will improve our lives, our homes, even our
relationships. The promise sounds good to us. And so we buy and buy and
buy these devices.

Just to be clear, there is not a doubt in my mind that technology has

improved our lives in numerous ways. But just as surely, it has created some
new problems along the way. For one, as we continue to accumulate new
devices at such an alarming rate, what do we do with the old ones? Most of
the time our old devices sit around our homes because we’re not sure what
to do with them.

So, is ever-growing device clutter inevitable? Of course not. Clutter can

always be controlled—even in a world of ever-advancing technology.

Deconstructing Obsolescence

Experts in the tech world make a distinction between technical

obsolescence and functional obsolescence.

Technical obsolescence occurs as soon as your device is surpassed in its

features by another device of its type. For example, the maker of your

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smartphone comes out with a newer model ten months after you bought
yours.

Functional obsolescence, on the other hand, occurs only when your device
no longer works like it’s supposed to. That happens, for example, when the
software it runs ceases to work properly and is no longer supported by the
manufacturer.

A lot of us are tempted to buy something new soon after reaching the
point of technical obsolescence. If we find out that the cool new gadget we
bought last month has been replaced on the market by an even cooler one,
then we want that one!

I would argue that we should wait until we get closer to functional

obsolescence with our devices. So what if we don’t have the newest thing?
Who’s really going to care?

Now, I am not against the development or use of technology. In fact, I’m

pleased to say that decluttering is more possible today than ever because of
technology. In my phone, I carry movies, books, music, maps, a calendar,
plane tickets, and an address book (just to name a few)—all things I don’t
have to maintain in bulkier formats. Technology is one reason the pursuit
of the simple life continues to spread; it has never been easier to live with
less.

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But I fear that, these days, many assume new technology automatically
makes things better and only adds convenience. This is not always true.
And when we confuse functional obsolescence with technical obsolescence,
we add clutter to our homes rather than solutions. So let’s start with that
important distinction and factor it into our conversation going forward.

Decluttering Drawers and Closets and Shelves and Boxes…

I have a simple philosophy when it comes to decluttering: easier to harder.

In almost all circumstances and spaces, including when it comes to tech
clutter, I find this approach to be effective.

Rather than beginning the decluttering process by trying to make hard

decisions on what to keep and what to get rid of, start by compiling quick
wins and building momentum by focusing on easier things to get rid of.
After you declutter the easier, you’ll be in a better position to tackle the
harder.

You’ll notice this list below follows the same formula.

1. Declutter old cords and wires.

A pile of unused cords and wires is about as common in homes today as a

bathroom or a kitchen. Sometimes these cords collect in office drawers, in

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junk drawers, under the bed, or in a cardboard box in the corner of the
closet. Make some quick strides by starting there.

If you don’t recognize what a cord is for, just get rid of it. Seriously. If it’s
been so long that you don’t even remember what device it belonged to,
you’ll be okay getting rid of it. Look also for duplicate cords where one is
sufficient. These are all prime candidates for removal.

The one stumbling block you are going to face here is the thought, What if I
need this cord someday? First of all, you won’t. I’m 99.9% sure of that.
However, on the 0.1% chance you will need it, take heart—you can probably
repurchase it through Amazon and get it delivered in less time than it
would have taken for you to find it at the bottom of that pile anyway.

2. Declutter functional obsolete items.

Here’s another quick win when it comes to decluttering physical

technology: if it doesn’t work anymore, get rid of it. Old digital cameras,
old printers, old mobile devices that are no longer supported, old scanners,
even that one thing you bought and broke and always intended to take
back to the store but never did…it’s time to cut bait. Recycle appropriately.

Additionally, get rid of most paper manuals that you are holding onto.
Almost every instructional manual can be found online nowadays. If you’re

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in doubt about any specific manual, just open up a search engine and
search for “x manual” to see if you can find it quickly. You will.

And since you’re making such good progress, recycle all the old cardboard
boxes of those tech products and free up even more space in your home.

3. Remove unused tech items.

After removing functionally obsolete items, you’ll probably notice another

category of devices: items that work but that you do not use. I’m talking
about older technology that has been replaced, hobby items that you once
used and then forgot about, and tech components that once served an
important purpose but no longer do (your DVD player, for example).

At this point, you’ll need to ask yourself some harder questions. Do I use
this anymore? Has it been replaced by some newer technology (Netflix
comes to mind)? Do I really need to keep this around anymore? How much
space could I free up if I removed it?

You may need to get honest with yourself at this point about which devices
are genuinely improving your life and which are holding you back.
Francine Jay writes about the importance of “decluttering your fantasy self”
on her blog, Miss Minimalist. She explains it this way:

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“Too often, we hold on to stuff because it represents who we think we should be,
rather than who we are. Sometimes our fantasy selves are meant to impress others;
sometimes they’re relics of our past; sometimes they’re fantasies about our
future.” [4]

Did you once have dreams of becoming a photographer, a videographer, or

a digital scrap booker but somewhere along the way that dream or hobby
was replaced by something else? If so, it may be time to part ways with the
items you bought and begin the process of decluttering your fantasy self’s
tech life. As Francine summarizes, this is healthy: “Decluttering our fantasy
self gives us the freedom and resources to turn our other dreams into
reality.”

This step of decluttering our working-but-not-used technology will require

some hard work and time. You’ll probably need to fire up old computers
and thoroughly scan (and erase) that stack of old hard drives piled up in
your closet. But once it’s completed, you’ll be thankful that you did it.

4. Recognize the joy of one.

Ten years ago, my family decided to intentionally live with fewer

possessions. During our decluttering journey, we began noticing a
troubling trend in our home: duplicates. We owned multiple versions of
nearly everything.

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I realized we had bought into thinking that went like this: If owning one of
something is nice, owning more will be even better. But we were wrong.

Lately, I have discovered that if I own only one of everything—my favorite

—it has many benefits. I always know where everything is. I take better
care of my stuff. I create the opportunity to own higher-quality things.
And I can quickly identify anything that needs to be repaired or replaced.

Why am I telling you this? Because I think the principle is important when
it comes to tech clutter. As you declutter your physical tech products,
adopt a policy that says, “One is enough.” One mobile device, one
computer, one television, one camera, one drone. The principle here is that
owning one is actually better than owning duplicates of the same thing.
Try it out—you’ll love it!

What About Future Purchases?

Buying a new phone just because the upgrade has become available is
foolish if it doesn’t improve your life. The same could be said of cameras,
home entertainment equipment, and computers. You don’t need a bigger-
screen television if you can see movies and programs fine with the one you
currently have. Rarely do people regret waiting as long as possible to
upgrade their technology. You don’t need to line up to purchase a new
product just because the corporation that manufactures it says you need it.

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What you need to do instead is count the full opportunity cost of your
purchases. What else could you do with the money you won’t spend if you
pass up a tech purchase? Pay down your debt? Enjoy a weekend vacation?
Replace that worn-out mattress you’ve been using longer than your last
phone?

Start asking if that new technology will really improve your life or just
take you away from what matters in life. In all decisions tech related, ask
yourself, What problem does this solve?

Technology should make our lives easier by solving problems both at home
and at work quickly and efficiently. But if our technology is not solving a
specific problem for us, it is only adding to them.

...

Joshua Becker is the founder and editor of Becoming Minimalist, a website

that inspires 1 million readers each month to own less and live more. He is
also the best-selling author of The More of Less and founder of The Hope
Effect, a nonprofit organization changing orphan care around the world.

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Overtaken
by TARZANA JOE

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The warning has been given

Like a prophecy writ large

It says by 2030

The machines will be in charge

The robots will be ruling

From atop the highest tower

With Siri and Alexa

Primly, grimly sharing power

The droids will go on cruises

And have their truffles shaved

While breathing men and women

Will be virtually enslaved

The prospect of this future

Is as daunting as it’s numbing

Especially for those of us

Who clearly see it coming

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Others are dismissive

(Those naysayers saying, “Nay!”)

“Such a revolution

Is still centuries away.”

I say that on such certainty

Our overlords had planned

The Watsons and the Daleks

Are already in command

And while they rule in secret

A complacent nation slumbers

Machines have taken over

And they did it by sheer numbers

I only have one child

And I only have one spouse

But I think I have four score or more

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Computers in my house

There’s the desktop I call Shakespeare

And the laptop I named Fred

And seven broken smartphones

In the table by my bed

There’s the monster in the kitchen

With the monitor that’s cracked

And the clunky Android tablet

That my next-door neighbor hacked

There’s the old one with the disk drive

I got thinking it’d be fun to

Give Microsoft the finger

When I load it with Ubuntu

(Never got around to it)

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There’s the iPads and the iPods

That can barely hold a charge

Plus 11 elder hard drives

That I stashed in the garage

There’s the one that’s in my wristwatch

Which attaches to my feet

And one that’s in my Frigidaire

Which tells me what to eat

Resistance will be futile

Our liberation’s failed

Computers taking over?

I think that chip has sailed

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...

Joe Santi is one of the few poets in America (maybe the only) whose work
is broadcast weekly on nationally syndicated talk-radio. As a talk-radio
poet, Tarzana Joe’s weekly poems are commentaries on everything from the
recent elections to popular culture. Listener response to these segments has
kept them a part of a commercial radio program for over ten years.

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Colophon
Becoming Minimalist — [Link]

Becoming Minimalist is designed to inspire others to journey towards

minimalism in life... discovering the joy of intentionally living with less...
and realizing what that means for your unique lifestyle.

No Sidebar — [Link]

No Sidebar is a collaborative blog about minimalism, simple living, and

happiness. We want to help you turn down the noise that disrupts the
quiet of your heart and mind and soul.

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